Want to get a feel of where Italy is heading? Look at the Five Star Movement

Luigi Di Maio’s appointment as the
party’s PM candidate, stating he would seek other forces’ support in the
absence of a clear governing majority, marks an important step change.

Five Stars Movement (M5S) leader and Prime Minister candidate Luigi Di Maio presents movement's parliamentary candidates for the upcoming March general elections in Rome, Italy on January 29, 2018. Giuseppe Ciccia/Press Association. All rights reserved.Has Italy lost its way? And could
instability in the country jeopardise ambitions for a reform of the EU and the
Eurozone? In the run up to an election that most commentators expect will
produce no clear governing majority, ink has been generously spilt discussing the uncertainty surrounding the Italian vote.

Despite endemic reshuffles, Italy
was once known for the quasi immutable configuration of its political system,
with coalition governments dominated by the Christian Democrats following one
another uninterrupted for the best part of its post-war history. Since the
early nineties however, following the end of the so-called ‘First Republic’, the
country has become much more unpredictable.

The Five Star Movement (M5S)’s establishment
as a major force on the national political stage has recently added further
uncertainty to an already faltering picture. Its self-declared posture beyond
left/right politics disrupted a bipolar system that had crystallised in the
previous two decades around the competition between centre-left and
centre-right.

While it might be exaggerated to
suggest that Italy has lost its way – ultimately it has long seemingly lived on
the verge of collapse, and coped with it relatively well – Italian parties are
certainly going through a soul-searching exercise in an attempt to adapt to the
new political landscape where the M5S has become a force to reckon with. And
this could have important ramifications for the country’s role in Europe.

Their soul-searching is nowhere more
explicitly revealed than in the parties’ electoral programmes. Much has been
said about Italian parties’ unrealistic
promises. Less has been written on the strikingly similar content of the
main contenders’ agendas, which in many policy areas marks a break with their
respective ideological traditions.

Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition
has adamantly called for the introduction of a “dignity income” for every
citizen, a proposal which recalls the “citizenship income” already advocated by
the M5S. On the centre-left, Renzi’s Democratic Party promises tax cuts, once Berlusconi’s
traditional domain. And all the main forces agree on the necessity to curtail
immigration influxes.

Differences do exist in the way
contenders suggest that they will achieve similar goals – and should not be
ignored, at the risk of running into the ‘they’re all the same’ rhetorical trap.

At a macro level, the model advocated
by Renzi deliberately shares strong similarities with the programme advocated
by Macron in France, insisting on the need for domestic structural changes
alongside demands for a broader European reform. The right and the M5S, on the
other hand, are more actively engaging in an exercise that shifts blame for the
precarious conditions of the national economy to the supranational level.

But despite these differences, the
general perception is that of a campaign dominated by promises made to secure
the greatest electoral support, regardless not only of the proposals’
feasibility but also of their ideological content and coherence. None of the
parties, albeit with the above-mentioned differences, seems yet to have found a
coherent identity in Italy’s new political scenario, let alone developed a
clear vision for the country and its role in Europe in the medium to long term.

The most highly supported party

In the face of so much
uncertainty, however, the current evolution of M5S can help cement a new political
arrangement and provide us with a useful indicator of where Italy might be
heading next. The ball is in M5S’ court; whatever the future moves of the most supported
party in the country, they will influence those of other forces too.

In this respect, the appointment
of Luigi Di Maio as party’s political leader and prime ministerial candidate
has marked an important step (the latest in a series) in the Movement’s development.
The move has most notably mitigated the party’s traditional hostility towards
political alliances, with Di Maio stating he would seek other forces’ support in
the absence of a clear governing majority after the vote.

In the past, the electoral
coalition to the left of the Democratic Party, Liberi e Uguali (LeU, Free and
Equal), has opened
itself up to the possibility of a post-electoral dialogue with the Five
Stars. But the low levels of support mobilised by LeU do not make such an
option particularly attractive to many in the M5S. In this context, the
hypothesis of an alliance with the far-right nationalist League has been gaining
ground.

Such a move would probably be
resisted. A silent
infighting has cemented within the party between
the ‘pragmatists’, close to the new political leader and more inclined to accommodate
compromise in politics, and the ‘orthodox’ faction, represented by those
faithful to the (new left and uncompromising) nature of the Movement’s origins.

Ultimately, should Berlusconi’s
right-wing coalition succeed in securing a governing majority in the next
elections, it could postpone the showdown within the Movement. But the latter
seems set, sooner or later, to endorse a more clearly ideologically-grounded
positioning within the Italian landscape.

And this will probably provoke a
shift in its European stance too. Currently, this is in line with the
Movement’s characteristic broader ambiguity. While sitting with the EFDD group
in the European Parliament and generally perceived as highly critical of the EU,
a close look at the M5S’s voting
patterns in the Strasbourg assembly reveals more resemblance to the Greens
and the radical Left than to UKIP.

Should the Movement swing closer
to the League in the future, we are likely to witness the emergence of a
bipolar division between radicals and moderates in Italy. In such a scenario, the
M5S’s European critique will probably begin to revolve more distinctly around
the process of European integration than around a target list of single EU
policies. This would turn Italy, once amongst the most Europhile Member States,
into a much more Eurosceptic country.

If the M5S moves closer to
left-wing forces instead, possibly occupying the space left open by the shift
of the Democratic Party towards the centre, the resulting system might well be
built around three-poles, more ideologically coherent poles than they are at
present. In this case the critique of the EU articulated by the M5S is likely
to insist not on the process of integration per se but rather on the need to
change single policies. The M5S will also insist on making the EU more
democratic, echoing arguments voiced by the Greens and the European left, but keeping
Italy on its traditional Europhile path.

It is unclear at this stage which
direction the Movement is more likely to follow. But for an EU busy drawing the
lines on which to build its future, it is the final outcome of this soul-searching
process, beyond the result of the upcoming ballot in Italy, that will be
crucial.

About the author

Enea Desideri is a research analyst at think tank Open Europe. He holds a Masters in ‘European Studies: Ideas, Ideologies and Identities’ from the London School of Economics and Political Science, having previously studied at the University of Bath. His fields of interest include Euroscepticism and left-wing populism in Europe, with particular reference to the experience of the Five Star Movement in Italy.

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